User Comments - light487

Posted on: A Member of the 'Moonlight Clan'

I always have trouble with the positioning of the "thing" I want to ask about.. sometimes it comes before the shenme/zenme and sometimes it comes after.. but I am a little confused as to the true meaning of them. For example: 怎么快。。 is this more of a statement than a question? Like "You're so fast." as compared to "why are you so fast?".. whereas if you turn it around 快怎么, it translates literally as the same thing.. but I'm sure that there is some deeper meaning between the two?

I can't think of other examples off the top of my head right now to try and explain what I am having trouble with specifically but this issue comes up frequently when I am speaking and trying to express myself.

Posted on: Toothache

Can you explain for me the difference in usage of 吓人 xiaren and 害怕 haipa ? xiaren is a new word for me and up till now I have just been using haipa to say that I am scared of something.

Posted on: Toothache

Yes.. it seems to be fairly interchangeable in my experience.. I guess that there are "set" phrases/chunks, just like with everything else where teng is used instead of tong but no one corrects me if I use one or the other in any of the situations I have used them in. I've even said "yatong" to mean toothache in the past and haven't been corrected.. "toutong" (headache) is one I use frequently and I am assuming that "touteng" would be just as acceptable.

Posted on: Toothache

Yes.. luckily for me I have some Shanghainese friends I can speak with daily and they were able to do hand-gestures to show me the actions that these pulling verbs mean.. so now whenever I think of 拔 ba, I always think of my friend making the action of pulling something out of the ground.. :) There are quite a lot of verbs that transcend the basic ones, which refer to specific methods, directions of action or the item/tool you are using.

Posted on: What does she look like?

I'm a bit late to the party.. I am so busy these days but I do listen to these lessons on my iTouch. I have a question about alternate usage of 长. Can this only be used for the appearance of people and/or living things? Or can it also be used for appearance of non-living things such as the view of a landscape or mountains or the beach.. or maybe even the appearance of a shop (whether it is old and shabby or new and clean)..?

Can you give some additional examples of 长 being used in non-living things situations, if it is possible to use it that way?

Thanks.

Posted on: How's the weather?

wan'r is a northern thing.. Jenny is from Shanghai, which is not in the northern part of the country. Generally speaking, you will find that most people who are teaching won't use the 'er' sound that much.. it just confuses things because the actual word is "wan" not "wan'r".. When you say it correctly, it sounds like "wahn" when you say it with the 'er' sound, it sounds like "wahhr".. no N sound at all. This is also a very early lesson, one made years ago.. so not sure how they are doing things these days.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Shanghai

I had this last night.. the real ones in Shanghai.. haha..

I'm there now :)

Posted on: Describing Fear

This appears to be a transliteration of the English: Oh My God!..

Posted on: Why is everyone looking at me?

It's a little like the 迩来 word.. it means "up until this moment" or sometimes it can mean "recently" or "lately" but if you think about it, that's fairly similar to "up till now".. to extrapolate this further.. we can say that 起来 "when the time comes" and 迩来 "the time has come".. well sort of anyway.. it's a way to get your head around the use of 来 in the sense of time rather than simple action.. in these instances we can consider 来 to be talking about the movement of time.

Posted on: Hungry Traveler: Shanghai

Haha.. yes.. they can be quite scolding on the inside.. but they are sooo tasty! :)